


a crow’s murder, a jay’s party, and a magpie’s parliament.

by Werepirechick



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, BAMF Women, Banter, Dorks in Love, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Ghost Hunters, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, OT3, Paranormal Investigators, Polyamory, Possession, Temporary, and of how much she loves her boyfriends, for my bud who deserves the nicest of things in life, its temporary possession, she is the biggest badass, specifically april, this is mostly april's internal dialogue of being a badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: Bloody red on her lips is the go to, and April always applies it with care. It stands pleasantly stark against her dark skin and yellow sweaters, and she enjoys the tacky feeling it leaves on her skin as they go to face whatever monster or ghoul they’ve stumbled across tonight. It feels like a challenge, and April does indeed mean it that way to whoever and whatever they encounter.Of course. This means she tends to get in over her head, more often than not.Thank god she’s never flying solo.…usually.





	a crow’s murder, a jay’s party, and a magpie’s parliament.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guide_to_the_galaxy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guide_to_the_galaxy/gifts).



> for my palio jo, who gifted me this AU for MY birthday, and i haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
> 
> for those not in the know: this is a Mystery Gang AU set in the 80's featuring capritello and paranormal shenanigans. human AU obviously, minor gore and spooky moments, and the races for each of the kids are as follows: April is black, Donnie is blasian, and Casey is native.

April doesn’t wear makeup often. It’s expensive and tricky to use. Usually she has no patience for it and all the fuss it takes to wear it; particularly that when she chooses to show her boys some affection, it leaves  _evidence_  and people always Talk when two teenage boys have the same color left on their cheeks and there’s only one girl to be seen. 

April is sensible and to the point and doesn’t enjoy nosy, judging assholes making assumptions of her and her two companions. It makes her reach for her bat, and there are unfortunately few situations where that’s the correct response.

But, on the rare occasion, makeup is acceptable. She’s found, as she, Donnie, and Casey have faced stranger and more dangerous creatures on their journey crosscountry- having some battle paint on her face makes the experience less terrifying, more thrilling.

Bloody red on her lips is the go to, and April always applies it with care. It stands pleasantly stark against her dark skin and yellow sweaters, and she enjoys the tacky feeling it leaves on her skin as they go to face whatever monster or ghoul they’ve stumbled across tonight. It feels like a challenge, and April does indeed mean it that way to whoever and whatever they encounter.

Of course. This means she tends to get in over her head, more often than not.

Thank god she’s never flying solo.

…usually.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April rolls her shoulders, testing for a twinge to indicate something out of place or possibly broken. All she gets is uncomfortable muscle aches, and she knows she’ll be feeling  _that_  for the next few weeks at least.

Small price to pay, honestly, for falling through the floor of an abandoned mine shaft.

April counts to ten with her eyes closed, swallowing her brief fear, and then opens them again into darkness. There’s no sound around her except for her own breathing, and never has April ever wanted so dearly to her the voices of her boys.

So. She’s fallen down deeper into a haunted mine, she has no idea where she is, and hasn’t been able to find her god damn bat anywhere so far. Or the flashlight and radio that fell out of her hands during her fall, for all the good the malfunctioning radio might have done.

Rumor from the small town this mine is near is that the spirits haunting it are malevolent. A family gave them firsthand accounts of their son being dragged by an unseen force, towards the hollow mouth of the tunnels. He’d gotten away, but there’d been dark bruises shaped like hand prints around his ankles. 

There really isn’t any dispute that there’s a hostile spirit here, what with tens of other accounts like that scattered through the community and stretching back whole generations. April blows out a harsh breath and mutters about that being,  _“-just the icing on top of the cake, great.”_

She and her boyfriends need to stop splitting up to cover more ground. April isn’t sure how many more times they’ll get out of things like this unscathed.

She fumbles around a bit more, cursing whenever her fingers and knuckles scrape on stone rubble. April nearly shouts in triumph when she finally feels the plastic of a flashlight handle, and turns it on immediately.

She’s blinded for a long few seconds, blinking as her eyes adjust. Then, April grins as she spots the handle of her bat sticking out of the rubble, just on the other side of the mound. It only takes some shoving and kicking of heavy stone to get it free, and  _finally_  April is armed again with her blessed bat.

Definitely one of their more worthwhile afternoon’s, negotiating a retired and grumpy priest into doing a ceremony for an aluminum bat’s holy blessing. It’s seen them through ghouls and goblins alike. The question now is if it’ll work on malevolent spirits of wronged miners.

No signs of her radio, and the tunnel above April is far out of reach; the one she stands in with smooth sides and a too short mound of stone to jump from. April isn’t going to get anywhere, hanging out here and waiting for rescue.

So she slings her bat across her shoulders, aims her flashlight forwards, and starts walking in the direction she hopes is outwards.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April met Donnie because they lived close to one another, and as a result attended the same school.

Donnie had been the lankiest boy of all their class, tall as weed grass and growing just as fast. He’d had too-big glasses set on his face, magnifying cinnamon red eyes, and his hair hadn’t seem to know if it wanted to be smooth or wiry, sometimes being both in the same spots.

He’d worn hand-me-down shirts too short for his torso, jeans that always showed his ankles, and had a perpetual curious glint to his eyes. April had been drawn to him because underneath the sensibility and scientific deductions, Donnie had an impulsive streak a mile wide for ventures most would deem severely ill-advisable. Like April did, despite her pigtails and yellow dresses and friendly politeness.

And he talked back,  _really_  talked back, to anyone who talked down at him. April had been the sort to just stomp someone’s toes when they did that to her, and Donnie’s cutting remarks and pointed quips had made her laugh until her sides hurt.

He and his brothers. They really did end up as a second family to her, in all their chaos and familial bickering. Donnie had just been the one April got especially close with in the end, being the charming string-bean he was.

Especially after the night she said “ _I want to hold a seance to contact my dead mother I don’t even remember.”_  and he’d said  _“Okay.”_ without missing a beat.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April meets a dead end in the tunnel, after walking forever in increasingly tight and rough hallways, and realizes with a sinking sensation she’s gone the wrong way.

It figures with her luck she’d wander straight into the heart of the tragedy. The place a miscounted crew of miners- forgotten by a careless boss during clearance- were blown to bits and then buried in a dynamite blast.

April wonders if she should put her and her boys’ curiosity for the dangerous adventures in life to bed for a few weeks, and see if they can hunt again for Fresno Nightcrawlers instead of malevolent spirits.

Upside to the situation: April hasn’t talked directly to the spirits or invited contact. There’s a chance she’ll get out of this place unnoticed and-

April’s flashlight flickers rapidly, despite being brand new from the hardware store in town.

“Oh don’t you fucking  _dare,”_  April accuses her light source, and swears violently as it goes out. She smacks the butt of it against her thigh, praying its a fluke and the batteries will kick back in any second.

The flashlight refuses to come back to life and April is caught between being pissed off and instinctively terrified of being in pitch black darkness.

April finds the wall, pushing down her panic by grounding herself in the sightless void she’s trapped in.  _Count off the tools you have at your disposal,_  she reminds herself. Bat. Wits. Determination. Fight or flight instincts. Broken ass flashlight.

April wishes she could count Donnie’s calm directions and Casey’s bolstering bluster over the radio, which she doesn’t have, and probably would have been out of range from anyways.

She wishes she could reach out and grab their hands, in this moment. Lanky and nimble fingers of two people she never expected to be as embarrassingly smitten with as she is.

But they’re not here right now, so _. Buck up, O’Neil. Shrinking violet never suited you._

April sets her bat down between her legs, holding it there with her knees while she unscrews the flashlight’s parts. Maybe if she fusses with the batteries they’ll come back to life and she won’t be stuck in the dark of a creepy, dangerous, extremely haunted tunnel system-

-and it’s suddenly much easier to see what she’s doing with the flashlight. Probably because there’s something faintly glowing somewhere behind her.

April freezes, the same time as the air around her does.

The glow gets brighter, and every hair on her body stands straight up.

“Son of a bitch,” April mutters, and glances over her shoulder.

She’s expecting it, but the translucent apparition- apparition _s-_  still make a scream bubble in her throat. The miners, all in varying states of physical deterioration, have surrounded her from behind. Parts of their bodies are missing- arms and legs, gone- some skulls crushed and others missing completely- burnt or broken limbs reaching towards April and gaping mouths open still in everlasting screams of agony.

April screams back at them, and drops her useless flashlight.

She comes back up swinging, intent to at least stun the one closest to her.

Her bat goes right through the ghost miner’s face.

April stares in horror at her failed weapon- the  _very first time_  it’s ever done so- and realizes how utterly fucked she is.

“I want my damn money back,” April spits, and she ducks a clawing hand.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April met Casey while standing over a grave, which likely set the tone for their relationship following.

He’d been ragged around the edges, dressed in a suit baggy in all the wrong spots and looking like his world had fallen apart from underneath him. Black hair in a tight braid down his neck, and warm brown eyes surrounded by even warmer brown skin; he’d been someone who looked like they used to brim with life, but now had lost the spark that made them so alive.

And he’d look at April and Donnie, knee deep in the process of digging up someone’s remains, and he’d asked what they were doing in a graveyard with shovels and a freshly dug hole.

When she’d answered,  _“We’re looking for ghosts, because there’s one haunting the deli a few blocks that way, and it’s origin is coming directly from the coffin sitting about six feet below our feet,”_  and Donnie had chimed in,  _“Give or take a few inches,”_ Casey’s eyebrows had gone up a few inches, and a sliver of the life April suspected him to have returned to his eyes.

 _“That’s pretty metal,”_  He’d said instead of calling them crazy, and April had the prevalent notion that this was someone they were going to get along with just fine.

He told them later why he’d been in the graveyard, that his mom had died, confessing so between ghostly encounters and getting to know each other’s quirks, and he’d said it in such a quiet and vulnerable voice April hadn’t been able to stop her hands from cupping his cheeks, or her lips finding a place on his.

Funny how her boyfriend had watched with interest instead of jealousy, and Donnie’s hand had ended up tangled with Casey’s not long after; long fingers tracing each other’s knuckles and holding tight in the privacy of narrow alleyways and darkened rooms. 

Adrenaline inducing adventures did wonders to speed up a budding relationship.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April’s knees impact the stone floor, grinding sharp edges of rough ground into her jeans and skin, and she’s up faster than the pain can register.

Why the blessing on her bat aren’t working- April is going to have  _words_  with that priest- is a untimely mystery for her current situation. She  _should_  be able to give a good smack to anything that has evil intent-

-unless the beings currently chasing her aren’t evil and in fact are just tormented souls of unfortunate men and god  _damn_  April wishes she’d remembered the fine print of things before traipsing into a nest of restless spirits.

April isn’t sure how she’s staying ahead of he translucent men. She isn’t going to question too deeply the logistics of a human outrunning a mob of ghosts.

Somethings snags the ends of her braids, and April yelps as it tugs  _hard_  on her hair. Her feet slip as she’s pulled backwards.

She falls.

April’s skull impacts the stone and flittering sparks fill her vision. The unnatural glow that barely lights the tunnel swims around her as the spirits do, guttural sounds and distant watery voices filling the rapidly thinning air.

A man missing half his face looms over her, giving April an up close view of his destroyed features. A hollow where his eye socket and left ear should have been, showing burnt and dripping viscera inside his skull.

He makes a sound displaced from where it should come from, and dives down at her.

April’s vision whites out as she screams.

 

 

-///-

 

 

She’s lying with her wife, young and beautiful and carrying their child. It’s only a few more months, and her stomach’s bump is signal that soon they’ll need more space, more food, more income…

“Be safe,” She says, gently cupping April’s cheek and giving a pleading look. “I know those tunnels aren’t as safe as people pretend they are.”

“Of course I’ll be,” April replies, cupping the hand on her cheek and smiling into it. “You know I always am.”

Someone snorts outside April’s range of vision, a deeper sound than any woman usually makes. “Uh huh, sure O’Neil. Like you were careful runnin’ headfirst at a crow monster when it got it’s claws in me.”

April blinks, and the young woman beside her melts into a man, dark skinned with wild short hair. Donnie looks back at her, still pleading, and Casey’s arm wraps around them both from behind April’s back.

“You’ll watch my back,” April finds herself repeating, from hours ago when they were just considering entering the mines. This already happened.

Donnie rolls his eyes, and moves close enough to brush his lips over hers. “Obviously. That’s possibly the only constant we have.”

April feels his lips on hers, feels Casey’s against her neck, and knows this isn’t where she should be, warm and lulling as it is.

She feels the presence that doesn’t belong, swimming and swelling all around this precious moment that belongs  _only_  to April and her boys.

She closes her eyes to Donnie, pushes bother her boys away, and delves into the pool of strength in her core.

_This isn’t real. You don’t belong here. Get OUT of my head, THIS DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU._

_My life didn’t belong to_ them,counters the spirit in her, and April feels again the love and agony and loss that this miner had- losing his wife and child and future all in one horrible mistake- and her will wavers.

But. She’s dealt with possession before.

 _Eat shit,_  she tells the miner, and draws on the fire inside her. The scene around her blurs, her boys still tucked close to her, but steadily disintegrating as she forcibly burns out the invasion of her mind.

 _WAIT!_  he begs, and something slides across her vision just as April burns up the last of the scene and the combined memory of their loved ones.

Something dark, something horrifying. Something that’s been keeping all these miners trapped here for decades and been making them pay for the social crucifixion it’d suffered after it’s mistakes in life.

Something corrupted. Something evil.

Something April can  _hit._

April drops out of the dream, the vision of a warped and demonic spirit chasing her as she does.

 

 

-///-

 

 

“Is this really going to work?” Donnie had asked, whisper quiet and said without looking either of them in the eye. “Can we really. Really be us?”

Curled together in the back of a van, newly bought and newly broken in, in all the important ways- April knew Donnie was revealing something he would probably only ever reveal this once.

She’d pressed closer, putting her nose to his hair and saying, “We’re planning on going cross country to hunt things no one really believes in, after dealing with some of those things just in our neighborhood multiple times. I think there’s plenty things more impossible than us managing being us.”

“What she said,” Casey had mumbled, and thrown his long limbs over both of them, reassuring in the way he knew best. Physical shows of affection and loyalty. April had grinned against Donnie’s ear, kissing it and making him squeak between her and Casey, and she’d believed they really could be.

Now, she opens her eyes to Donnie over top of her, glasses shining in the unnatural glow of the ghosts surrounding them, and April hears him and Casey both shouting at her.

April lifts a hand, clutching at the deep purple sweater she’d made Donnie start wearing. The stark relief in his expression at her responsiveness is obvious, and April manages a tight smile as her head pounds.

“Where’s my bat?” She asks the second her cottony feeling tongue will let her.

Donnie laughs hoarsely, and hauls her off the ground and against his chest. “Of  _course_  you ask where your bat is right after being possessed.  _Of course.”_

 _“She’s awake?!”_ Casey demands, standing guard over them both. April sees him over Donnie’s shoulder, clutching her bat and giving wildly angry and terrified looks at the ghosts ringing them.

April sits up properly, leaning only somewhat on Donnie as she gets off the icy and uncomfortable ground. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just had a headmate for a moment there.” She reaches out, tugging at the black sweater Casey wears. “Gimme my bat. Sweet as it is, you don’t need to protect us from these guys. They already said everything they needed to.”

Casey makes a disbelieving sound, but like he almost always does, he trusts her. Even with a dozen some ghosts surrounding them and sticky blood on the back of April’s neck, he hands over her bat with only a beat of hesitance.

April sets it’s wide end on the ground, subtly leaning on it for support. She clears her throat as her boyfriends come to stand at her side, and she speaks clearly as she’s able to post-possession. “Attention gentlemen,” April says with straight shoulders, even though her head aches fiercely. “We’re paranormal hunters, and we’re here to free you from your haunting.”

 _“We are?”_  Casey asks in a mumble, and Donnie shushes him. April continues, “I’ll forgive you for the trespassing and general violation of my brain, but please. Don’t do that again.” Her temples throb and April tastes something wrong in the air on her tongue. She grins with her crimson lips. “So, as Mr. Mc’Millin so kindly shared with me, there’s a certain someone who’s the real culprit of those accidents, isn’t there?” April grins wider as the circle of ghosts wail angrily.

“…care to fill us in on things?” Donnie whispers in her ear, just as a shiver goes through the air. His hands land on April’s shoulders, steadying and protective as something viscerally  _wrong_  makes itself known. Casey’s don’t, but April knows he’s probably gone back to back with Donnie as they search for the threat.

“We’ve had a change in target,” April explains, and hefts her bat as the tunnel rushes with unnatural wind. “What do you think a small town would do to someone, if they killed the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons of a community?”

Something glows, back the way she came running from, and it’s much bigger than the faint ones of the miners. It gets brighter and brighter as it approaches, and April’s bat lights up with holy light to match it.

The inscribed biblical symbols along it’s length burn white, giving it an appropriately angelic halo. With an evil presence in range, it practically hums with energy to cleanse and destroy.

April really does love her bat.

Donnie draws his weapon as well- a modified .41 caliber Colt House Revolver with four rounds of cleansing silver bullets in the chamber- and April hears the a bullet slide into the chamber with a soft click as he aims. Casey steps slightly ahead of them both, black sleeves rolled up to display his thickly inked tattoos; swirling protection wards drawn by an elder of his nation and threaded directly into his very being. Casey grins, wolfish as the single claw charm hanging from his neck; Donnie narrows his eyes at their rapidly approaching target, utterly concentrated.

April gives it a wide smile, toothy as anything and worthy of the bright red of her lips.

 _“Holy shit,”_ Casey breathes through his bared teeth, just as things rush into motion _. “So. Metal.”_

The malformed, rage twisted being rushes into sight; it’s mass owed to decades of building, festering hatred for the miners he’d thoughtlessly murdered in life. What’s left of the mine’s former owner is nothing short of monstrous, howls from it’s hungry, gaping mouth echoing all around them as it half flies, half lopes towards them. It’s huge, and terrifying, and everything that goes bump in the night.

April jumps forwards, and hits it in the face with a resounding clap of purity and taint colliding.

Donnie fires off one of his precious few shots soon as she’s clear, the corrupted spirit screaming as the blessed metal blasts through it’s chest, and Casey dodges in to give it a well deserved uppercut not a second later.

April winds up for another blow, and falls into the violent dance she and her boys have perfected.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April blows out around the cigarette in her mouth, white smoke clouding the air as she sits in the back of their van. Her split lip throbs as she satisfies her oral fixation, but its barely holding a candle to the goose egg on the back of her skull.

Casey’s legs hang over the edge with hers, limp as he lies backwards on their shared mattress stuffed into the van. With the back doors open as they wait for Donnie in the phone booth next to the road, April mires in the victory of their successful exorcism.

The woman who’d asked them to help in the first place, Annie Mc’Millin, descendant of the miner they’d set free, had been so thankful to them all. Few people in the town admitted aloud that there were Things in the mines, and having Annie’s local knowledge had really helped.

She’d been so glad to know her son hadn’t been hurt by her great grandfather; glad enough to cry a little. April thinks that has to be the best part of their victory.

That, and the nice blankets she’d given them. Things got cold in the van, even with three people sharing space.

April takes her cigarette out of her mouth, tapping it’s red stained length to drop ash on the ground. In the quiet evening, adrenaline long gone and just aches left behind, April feels pretty damn good for a woman who’s recently been possessed.

Casey might take a little longer to recover, seeing as he’d been nailed in the chest by a ghostly punch. He has a pretty large bruise center of his chest, and April knows he’s going to either pretend he’s perfectly fine or that he can’t lift a finger for fear of worse injury. And it will last at least two weeks, possibly a month, because hes an over dramatic idiot who takes hits for people he cares about.

April and Donnie had both called him a moron, Donnie especially loud since the hit was meant for  _him._  Casey had grinned and said it was nothing, that his protective wards meant out of all them, it’s him that can take the most hits and still get back up afterwards.

Donnie had cuffed Casey’s ear and hugged him hard enough neither of them could breathe. April wrapped herself around them, listening to Donnie cuss Casey out for being a self-sacrificing idiot and that he should remember just because he  _could_  take the hits, didn’t mean that he  _should._

And Casey had laughed in a wobbly way, said “ _Okay, you got me there,”_  and pushed his face into both their chests while the smell of broiled rock and singed salt cleared from the air. It’d been a sound that made April’s chest tight with a hundred desperate emotions, and a rough sniffle come from Donnie.

April thinks they couldn’t have found a better boyfriend, standing in that graveyard in the middle of the night.

Speaking of boyfriends, April watches as Donnie goes through a series of increasingly sporadic arm gesticulations in the phone booth, and finally press his forehead up against the glass and seem to question his life choices very loudly, without ever saying a word.

“I think Donnie’s having a breakdown,” April says, tapping her cigarette again and dropping flakes on the road. She nudges Casey’s leg with her knee. “Hey, babe, wake up. Our boyfriend is having a breakdown in the phone booth.”

Casey makes an incomprehensible mutter that sounds mostly asleep, and April rolls her eyes fondly. She would otherwise let him rest, but Donnie is having a crisis of some sort. All hands on deck are required.

April leans over Casey, carefully pecking him on the lips as he groans again, and hops out of the van. Donnie sees her coming, and drops the phone to open and walk out of the booth.

“Please,” He says in a faint voice, waving at the phone as a way of saying  _please, my wonderful amazing girlfriend, take care of my no doubt family related disaster._ He sits down on the curb, putting his hands in his short and messy hair, and April pats his head as she passes.

She takes her cigarette out of her mouth as she picks up the phone. “’ello?”

“ _April! Yo! What’s up, girl?”_

“Mikey, good to hear from you,” April leans on the side of the booth, smiling as Mikey laughs. They’ve been out of contact the last three days, and it’s nice to hear the kid brother of her boyfriend again. “What’s happening on your end of the world?”

“ _Ah, same old same old. I think I might get a promotion soon, though! I’m at least 70% sure my boss is about to make me prep cook.”_

 _“_ Wow, that’s great, Mikey,” April knows that there’s more to this than just promotions. Donnie wouldn’t be having a Why Me moment otherwise. “How’s everyone else?”

“ _Boring shit, mostly. Raph sold a few good paintings, an’ Leo’s been getting a lot of good shifts lately. I gave kitty a new toy recently, too, and she hasn’t let it go since! Catnip lives up to it’s name, ha ha. She bit Leo twice just yesterday.”_

April waits after the pause, feeling something else coming.

“ _Oh, and Leo’s a werewolf now.”_

There it is.

“Mike,” April understands now why Donnie in on the curb, being comforted by the recently resurrected Casey Jones. “could you have  _started_  with the fact that your older brother is now a lycanthrope?”

“ _Hm. Maybe?”_

 _“_ What even happened?”

“ _Leo took a late shift, ran into some big ass dogs on the way home last full moon, bada bing bada boom he’s bit and now cursed. We didn’t notice until the full moon on Thursday, when he, uh. Kinda transformed and ate half the couch.”_

April takes a slow breath in. She’s going to need a few more cigarettes tonight, she just knows it. “Did he bite anyone else?”

“ _Nah. He was like, mostly cognitive, if really doggish and confused. He’s been hiding in his room ever since and won’t come out. I think he’s embarrassed about the couch incident.”_

 _“_ Or maybe concerned he’ll turn one of you, too?”

“ _No it’s definitely the couch thing.”_

April laughs, shaking her head. Three days they leave these boys unattended, and look what happens.

Casey knocks on the booth, opening the doors, and asks, “Hey, Apes? Donnie’s mumbling about dogs and couches. What’s up?”

April flicks her used butt at Casey’s feet, which he automatically stomps out. “Leo’s a werewolf,” April informs her boyfriend, and Casey makes an  _Oh I see_  noise.

“We headed back to New York, then?”

“ _That’d be appreciated,”_ Mikey says, catching Casey’s words. April nods, and Casey ducks out of the booth, headed for the van.

“I leave them alone for  _three days,”_  Donnie exclaims, throwing his hands up at the heavens. “Three days! And one of them manages to be turned into a lycanthrope.  _How.”_

 _“_ I think our family is just special like that, hon,” April says, lip curling as Donnie curses in three languages at once. (Japanese, English, Latin. He’s too well read to curse in just one.)

“ _We’re very special an’ love you guys lot’s so please come home soon?”_ Mikey says over the phone, and April snorts.

“Give us a few days, and don’t do anything stupid before we get back.”

“ _Thank youuuu.”_

 _“_ And tell Leo not to worry, the cavalry’s on its way.”

“ _I’ll inform he can stop moping around like a kicked dog, now.”_

 _“Without_  the canine jokes, Mikey.”

“ _I make no promises.”_

April laughs, tells Mikey they all love him too, and hangs up. Donnie is still sitting on the curb when she steps out beside him, looking like he is still questioning what he ever did to deserve anything.

“C’mon, honey,” April encourages, hauling Donnie up by his arm. “Let’s go bail our family out of trouble. I wanted to go home and swap my clothes out anyways.”

“Three days,” Donnie repeats, gesturing at the air in exasperation. “Amazing. Incredible. I hate my family and I sincerely question how any of us manages to function around the disasters we attract.”

“Like I said,” April says, giving him a kiss on his bruised cheek. “we’re all just special like that.”

“Mgh,” Donnie says, and kisses her back instead of complaining more. Casey, probably watching the show and feeling left out, honks the horn of the van, and spurs April and Donnie into action.

April notes that she’s gone and left faint smudges on both her boys’ cheeks and lips, hardly visible in the dimming light of the evening, and is quietly pleased for that. No one else is here to see, and she thinks she deserves this bit of indulgence after all they’ve been through lately.

April rolls down the front window as she gets comfortable in the passenger seat, pressed against Donnie’s side as he sits in the middle, and smiles to herself as Casey starts up a playful banter with their boyfriend; mostly surrounding the fact that  _Casey’s_  sibling is in high school and keeping out of trouble, and Donnie’s siblings are nothing  _but_  trouble. And although Donnie agrees, he’s defensive as always of his brothers, and off the two of them go again.

April turns up the radio, listening to the synthpop it plays as they pull out of the quiet and significantly less haunted little town. Donnie lights her another cigarette without being asked to, and Casey notches up the volume as a rock song takes the place of the synthpop.

April blows smoke that flies out the window, and keeps smiling as the miles roll by.

 

 

-///-

 

 

April had one boy, through her childhood and teens, and now she has two as a young woman with wanderlust in her heart and burning curiosity in her soul. And she loves them so much she can scarcely breathe. 

Things that go bump in the night beware- April O’Neil has a bat, a blood red challenge to the world, and two lanky birds of a feather at her side.

The paranormal won’t know what hit it.

**Author's Note:**

> i absolutely fucking love my ot3 and april being a supreme badass. those two things are synonymous to me and at this point they should be to everyone who reads my work.
> 
> love ya friendo, hope you liked your spooky gift fic for your october bday. :D


End file.
